By the Lieutenant Colonel
President G. W. Bush’s version of progressive idealism implemented under the banner “Compassionate Conservatism” resulted in a Middle East foreign policy blunder. He along with many in his administration believed Sadam Husain’s authoritarian regime repressed a population majority longing for “Democracy”. The United States would nobly be liberators bringing democracy to the people while simultaneously eradicating the regime’s WMD threat to the region. They naively believed that the concepts of liberty, tolerance, inalienable rights, responsible representative government, and basic human decency were universally sought if only given the chance to flourish. Soon after the fall of Bagdad, the complexity of imparting (from the outside-in) largely foreign concepts of societal governance (Nation Building) quickly appeared. Reaction in the U.S. spanned from, “uh-oh, get out quick and let them fend for themselves”, to “we broke it, and are morally obligated to fix it”. After nearly nine years with extortionate costs in blood and treasure, it is still unknown whether a stable and lasting, free and democratic nation will endure. There are few signs Iraq will be different in any way other than Sadam eventually replaced by another strongman in a pseudo election based on religious sects of Shia and Sunni (No Christians need apply). Unfortunately, President Obama and his administration, infected with an even more zealous form of progressive idealism, are only multiplying the blunders with foreign policy schemes and/or military intervention in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, Turkey, and where next???.
Admittedly, early on I was among those who once proclaimed cautious optimism about President Bush’s intentions as shown by this passage from a post I made to a 2004 on-line article critical of the Iraq War… “We must be patient with the good folks I'm sure are present in Iraq. Our independence was achieved by patriots who knew what liberty was, and understood what they were fighting for. The scenario for the Iraqi people is much different; most have no experience with the concepts of liberty and representative democracy. With time and education, their desire for liberty will flourish.”
I must concede the folly of my wishful thinking. It is a huge culture-centric miscalculation to think that ideas and values that evolved throughout millennia in the Western ideological environment of Judeo-Christian theology, Greek rationalism, and the European enlightenment… that roused Colonial America’s “Great Debate” and founding of a historically unique Constitutional Republic are somehow universal. While some societies noticed the prosperity and individual freedoms of the United States, admired and subsequently adopted our Constitution’s doctrines in various forms, other society’s ideals and values were deeply rooted in their own cultural traditions. The reality is that some society’s culture is completely contradictory to our most fundamental American principles of self-determination and entrepreneurship. These principles are completely foreign to them, and in their view even threaten their cultures established “social order”. Such is the Middle East where most see Islam as the “One” ultimate truth and Sharia the only law of the land. No doubt there are a small number of people throughout the Middle East who somewhat understand and desire “Western” ideas of individual liberty and the governance needed to protect it, but they are truly an exception.
When observing the human misery and poverty inherent in other societies, we “feel” morally responsible to help these misfortunate people end tyranny and we want to “bestow” (i.e., give) them an opportunity for individual liberty that we know enabled our Democratic Republic to grow so prosperous. However, the message from the Middle East has been overwhelmingly consistent and constant…when monarchs or dictators are overthrown and “popularist” democratic elections held, the masses turn to charismatic leaders and political movements; they substitute one form of tyranny for a seeming “benevolent” Islamic autocracy--they are immortally trapped by their religion that by definition demands to also be their government. When the religion IS the government, the government by definition can’t be wrong because that would mean God was wrong…but God is not running the government, men are. You can see the problem they face. In “Palestine”, Hamas swept to power. In Lebanon, Hezbollah brought down the moderate Lebanese government. In Iran in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected. In the Iraqi elections of 2010, the big winner was the anti-American Islamist Muqtada al-Sadr. [1] When Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak allowed some electoral districts to be contested, the Muslim Brotherhood won most of them. And now that he is ousted, Islamist overwhelmingly win the elections. Afghanistan, a tribal society mess the Russians couldn’t subdue in ten years, but we’re the nice guys on the moral high-ground bringing democracy to all and will fare better…Now, yet once again, we can see how that is working out.
These people have little or no knowledge of and have no interest in finding out about Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Smith, or Burke. They don’t have their own Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison or Washington, because these ideas and these men would be seen as an affront to Islam. [1] They know only their ancient culture and what they are told is from the Koran (which of course no one can question without fear of having their head cut off). There is a natural tendency for our society having progressed so far over the last couple of hundred years, to “feel” morally responsible to “fix it.” (And unfortunately our culture has come to believe that all problems can be solved in a one hour TV show, minus the 18 minutes of commercials?) We are certainly naive to expect a different outcome in Iraq, Afghanistan or really any other country around the world than the one we see on our nightly news broadcast.
Post Script--“The Colonel” made an excellent comment regarding this article that I really wish I would have thought of, me being an avid Star Trek fan...
“Remember the Star Trek Prime Directive? Even though the Enterprise had superior social and science development they were forbidden from interfering in the affairs of less developed cultures...see, even Hollywood of old recognized the dangers of such interventions.”--The Colonel
[1] Note: Inspired by or cited from various comments on “Welcome to the Islamist Middle East and It’s Not Going to Be Moderate”, Barry Rubin, PJMedia.com, entries October 2011. http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/10/25/welcome-to-the-islamist-middle-east-and-its-not-going-to-be-moderate/